AP makes this sound as if the Democrats are scoring a major victory. I don't get it: according to everything I've been seeing and hearing, the Senate is the stumbling block to ObamaCare, not the House of Representatives. And the nine people who are switching their votes are all Democrats.
The AP article finishes its first paragraph by saying, "...brightening the party's hopes in the face of unyielding Republican opposition." Why does "unyielding Republican opposition" matter? If the Democrats had simply gotten their shit together before January 20 they would have had their bill on Obama's desk and signed into law. The Democrats couldn't agree on what ObamaCare should look like, so why is "unyielding Republican opposition" even mentioned?
Because the Democrat party (and its willing accomplices in the press) says it's the GOP's fault they couldn't pass their bill. Even though the Republicans could not possibly have stopped them before the election of Scott Brown.
Here is why:
Top Democrats are reminding colleagues and voters at home that the Senate already has passed its version of the health care bill on Christmas Eve with a super-majority of 60 votes, which squelched a GOP filibuster without resorting to reconciliation rules. The new plan calls for the House to pass that same bill and send it to Obama for his signature.These nine votes are necessary if the Democrats want to pass the Senate bill in the House. The House doesn't want the Senate bill, which is one reason the Democrats are in this fix now: instead of a single high-level Democrat (say, Barack Hussein Obama) putting forth a bill and saying, "Democrats! Pass this bill!" we had "Dingy" Harry Reid come up with his bill, and Nancy "pass the botox" Pelosi come up with her bill, and each house of Congress passed its own bill and hates the bill from the other house.
But that is contingent on a Senate promise to make several subsequent changes. Those would have to be approved under the special budget reconciliation rules, because Democrats now control only 59 of the Senate's 100 votes — one shy of the number needed to stop a bill-killing filibuster.
Come to think of it, each house had to twist arms and make concessions to pass its own bill.
The bill--any version--is a complete stinker. No one wants it except for the Democrat leadership and certain maggoty sectors of the electorate. (See also "DailyKoz", "metafilter".) The Democrats themselves know it, which is why House Democrats fought over who would get to vote against it. It's going to lose them seats regardless of whether it passes.
The Democrats need it: if ObamaCare fails to become law before November, when the Democrats lose control of Congress they will not be able to get it back for a long, long time--and when they do get it back, they'll have to fight tooth and nail to retain it, which they hate. Much easier to put a new entitlement into place which will enable them to buy votes, they way they've managed with Social Security, Medicare, et al.